Three Years Too Many: A Plan to Exit Iraq

(The following is a new column I've written for UNT's NT Daily newspaper. The original Boston Globe article discussing Lawrence J. Korb's plan can be found here.)

On the third anniversary of its beginning, Denton locals gathered at the Courthouse on the Square to protest the war in Iraq and demand its end. Over 2,300 U.S. soldiers have died in the war mired in insurgency so far and breakouts of sectarian violence have pushed the country into the brink of a civil war most now believe is inevitable.

I won’t reiterate arguments about whether we should have gone into Iraq or not here. But I do think that most people, no matter what side they are on in that debate, wish for our troops to come home as soon as possible.

The Bush administration has no plan for that. They and their Republican supporters have told us only that we will not “cut and run” and will “stay the course until the job is finished” (though they have yet to definite exactly what “finished” means. Is it Iraq as a full-fledged Democracy or just stabilized now?).

But many Democratic Party leaders are beginning to consider a broad plan that would begin a phased withdrawal of US troops and install them elsewhere in the region where they could respond to emergencies in Iraq and continue the fight against terrorists.

The concept, termed "strategic redeployment," sets a goal would take nearly all US troops out of Iraq by the end of 2007 (a study found that 72% of U.S. troops in Iraq also believed that withdrawal should take place within a year). All reservists and National Guard members would come home this year and most of the other troops would be redeployed to Afghanistan and other key areas, with large, quick-strike forces placed in Kuwait where they could respond to crises in neighboring Iraq.

This idea of phased withdrawal and redeployment of troops out of Iraq recognizes that a huge US military presence in the country is straining our armed services as well as feeding the insurgency. Many military commanders agree that the nation should be moving toward taking American troops out of Iraq and give the Iraqi government a greater incentive to handle its own security. Also, setting dates for troop withdrawal would send a message to the Iraqi people that the United States does not intend to set up permanent military bases there.

It’s time for us to realize the Iraqis want us to go and only they, not us, can determine the fate of their country. And if we implement this plan and are indeed out by the end of 2007, we'll have been there almost five years. That's not cutting and running. But it is a plan to get our men and women home, and that’s better than any alternative we have.